


Christmas With The Carters

by BuckyWithTheGoodHair86



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, F/M, First Christmas, It was beautiful, Post-Endgame, Romance, Steggy - Freeform, Steggy Secret Santa, Steve and Peggy's happy ever after, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21937963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckyWithTheGoodHair86/pseuds/BuckyWithTheGoodHair86
Summary: The story of Steve and Peggy and their first Christmas together as Mr. and Mrs. Carter.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 90





	Christmas With The Carters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Katherine (for_steggy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/for_steggy/gifts).



> This story is a Steggy Secret Santa gift for for_steggy. Merry Christmas!

* * *

Peggy stamped her feet on the doormat quickly, then stepped inside and shut the door behind her to keep the warmth in. She shook the snow from her coat, carefully, so as not to leave wet spots all over Steve’s nice clean floor. She inhaled deeply as she hung up her coat and scarf. Whatever Steve was cooking smelled _amazing_ —turkey, if she had to guess.

“Steve?” she called.

The Christmas carols coming through the radio in the kitchen quieted, and Steve stuck his head around the door. “Hey!” he said with a smile. He walked into the living room to greet her, picking her up off the floor and kissing her soundly. “Welcome home.”

“So good to be here,” she said. She was actually getting proper time off—a whole week for Christmas, and she intended to enjoy every minute of it. “You’ve certainly been busy,” she said with a smile, looking around the living room. Neat little strands of white lights were hung up in the windows, with festive green garlands above them and wrapping around the bannister going upstairs. There was a wreath on the front door, and the table was already set for a very fine dinner, with their best dishes and silverware, and all of the napkins folded into elegant little red fans.

He chuckled. “I was getting into the holiday spirit,” he said. “This is the first Christmas I’ve had in fourteen years where I wasn’t in the middle of a war, or liable to be called away for some sort of earth-shattering catastrophe. I wanted to enjoy actually getting to do it right. And this is our first Christmas together like this.” He smiled and kissed her softly. “I wanted it to be beautiful.”

“I don’t know,” Peggy teased. “The first Christmas we spent together was quite something.” Peggy and the Howling Commandos had spent the Christmas of 1943 in a barn in France. The place had smelled of wet chickens, they’d been soaked in mud, and they’d eaten tinned beef stew that they couldn’t heat for fear of setting the barn on fire. Gabe had managed to discover two tins of peaches in the bottom of his backpack as a treat for dessert, and they’d sung a couple of off-key carols and listened as Jim recited The Night Before Christmas.

“There will be no mud or straw or chickens in my nice clean living room,” Steve said with as stern a frown as he could muster while smiling at the memory. “But I could probably dig you up some canned peaches. I mean, I _did_ make a chocolate cake with fresh strawberries on top and some of Mrs. Barnes’s famous cinnamon sugar cookies, but I can just eat all that myself.”

Peggy laughed and smacked him playfully on the shoulder. “The peaches can wait.” She smiled at him warmly then, all teasing set aside. “The house looks lovely, darling.”

He smiled back and slipped an arm around her. “I saved the tree until you got home,” he said, nodding at the bare Christmas tree in the corner. “It’s our first Christmas as the Carters, and since we don’t have any traditions yet, I thought that would be a good place to start.”

Peggy’s smile widened, a thrill shooting up her spine at the realization that this was the beginning, that they could build traditions together, something special and meaningful that was theirs.

“Before we start, though,” Steve said, reaching into the pocket of his cardigan. “Here.”

He pulled out a small box with a little red bow on top and placed it in Peggy’s hand. “Christmas is tomorrow,” she said.

“I know.” He smiled. “But you should open this one now.”

Peggy untied the bow and removed the lid. Inside was a little glass house with a ribbon affixed to the roof. ‘1948’ was etched across the little door.

“It’s our first ornament for the tree,” Steve explained, with just a slight emphasis on the word ‘our’—they had other ornaments, but they were ones Peggy had collected over the years. “It’s a house because, well, we started a home together,” he said, blushing a little, as if he was hoping the idea wasn’t too silly.

Peggy felt unexpected moisture springing to her eyes. “Oh, Steve, I love it,” she said softly. It was so lovely and thoughtful.

Steve smiled, and he slipped his finger through the ribbon and held the little house up against the lights in the window. “I thought the glass would really sparkle with the lights on the tree.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

Though Steve had saved the decorating of the tree until she got home, he had gone ahead and untangled the lights, so they could go directly on the tree and they could get started with the ornaments. The little house went front and center, right in the middle where it could be seen easiest and catch the best light. As they hung the rest of the ornaments up, they told stories of Christmases from their childhoods, and Steve asked to hear the stories behind the ornaments of hers that look like they were special. There was a little fuzzy reindeer that Angie had given her, and a delicate little angel with actual feathers in the wings that had been a gift from her childhood friend, Kelly, after she’d moved to the States. There were a couple of old, battered, sentimental ones she’d inherited from her mother, and a twisted knot of thin wire that was more or less star-shaped. Michael had made her that one when he was eight.

“Oh,” she said, peeking inside a brown paper packet.

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“I’d forgotten this was in here,” Peggy said, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks a little.

“What?”

Peggy opened the packet and tipped the contents into Steve’s hand with a little jingle of metal. He stared at it for a moment before he registered what it was.

“My dog tags?” he asked quietly.

Peggy nodded. Steve had usually only worn his dog tags on incognito missions, and not ones where he wore his Captain America uniform—the dog tags were to identify you if something happened, he would argue, and the uniform did that well enough. Peggy suspected the real reason had more to do with the way the suit fit and the tags being uncomfortable tucked inside the neck. In either case, he hadn’t been wearing them when the Valkyrie went down.

“I found them in your tent,” she said. “When we were packing up your things. You know, after…” She smiled shyly. “There wasn’t a lot there, and since you had no next of kin, it all went into a box somewhere at the S.S.R., but I couldn’t…I told Phillips you must have been wearing them on the Valkyrie and slipped them into my pocket.”

Steve looked up at her, his eyes shining.

“It hurt too much to keep them out where I could see them all the time,” she went on. “So I put them with my Christmas things. And, I know it’s silly, but, there’s this old saying in Britain about Christmas being the time when the veils between the worlds are thinnest and that’s when ghosts can walk among us, and so I…I would hang them up and, and sit there on Christmas Eve and talk to you.” Her voice had started to wobble just a little bit. “I told myself it was just a nice way to remember you, but there was always a little part of me—the little girl who still believed her Gran’s ghost stories—that thought it might help you find me and I could see you again.”

“Aw, Peggy,” he breathed, sliding his arms around her. His eyes were watering, but hers weren’t exactly dry either, and she folded into his embrace, feeling his heartbeat where she rested her head on his chest.

She huffed a watery laugh, and he pulled back just enough to look down at her curiously. “I suppose it worked, didn’t it?” she said. She hugged him tightly, thrown back in time for a minute to the moment he’d first appeared on her doorstep and she’d been lost for words upon realizing that he was solid and real and in front of her and very much alive. “Though you’re certainly a bit more than a ghost.”

Steve laughed softly. “I am,” he said. He reached up one hand and slowly brushed his fingers across her cheek, soft and warm and reassuring in their solidness, then he slid his hand back to cup her head and pulled her gently forward, and if she’d needed convincing that he was alive and well and there, that kiss would certainly have done it.

When they broke apart, he smiled at her, kissed the tip of her nose, then moved to the tree, his dog tags still in his hand. He slipped the chain around a branch above the one the little glass house was hanging from, leaving the tags to come to rest right beside it. “There,” he said. “The ghost came home.”

“Took him long enough,” Peggy said, only teasing him to keep from crying again.

“It was a really long trip,” he said, knowing what she was doing and playing along.

She laughed at that, went up on her toes and looped her arms around Steve’s neck, kissing him deeply and losing herself for a while in the embrace. After several minutes of that, something beeped in the kitchen, and Steve reluctantly pulled away. “Oh, don’t go yet,” Peggy protested, kissing his neck.

“I could stay, but the rolls would burn,” Steve told her.

“Well, we can’t have that,” Peggy agreed, letting him go to return to the kitchen, though she followed him. The delicious aroma of fresh-baked bread rolled out of the oven as he opened the door, and she waited until he had set the tray down on the stove before snagging one off the end.

“Hey!” he protested.

Peggy grinned and took a bite, savoring the warm, buttery taste. “Don’t pretend you were going to serve these to the Jarvises on that baking sheet,” she said. “You’re going to put them in a basket with a nice little cloth, and then who’s to notice one’s missing?”

“Speaking of the Jarvises,” Steve said, taking the high ground and not attempting to snatch back the pilfered baked good. “They’re going to be here soon. You should probably go change.”

“And what is wrong with what I’m wearing?” Peggy asked in mock affront, having every intention of changing out of her work clothes anyway.

“Nothing but the fact that you gave me very specific instructions on how to iron the dress you wanted to wear tonight, and all the work it took me to find the right color thread to sew one of the buttons back on,” Steve replied primly, transferring the rolls to the aforementioned basket with a nice little cloth.

Peggy grinned. “You really are too good to me, darling,” she said, tearing off a little piece of bread and popping it into his mouth, then taking the rest of her snack upstairs to change for their guests.

She changed into the dress Steve had ironed and fixed for her, a deep red one that fit her like a glove and was what Angie would have called an every-girl’s-gotta-have-one dress—a dress that you loved the way it looked and felt on you, and you loved the way _you_ looked and felt in it. Peggy liked the way it swished around her calves, and though the cut was modest enough for a holiday dinner with company, every angle was her best in it.

She straightened her hair, indulged in a small spritz of perfume, then headed downstairs. Perfectly timed, as it worked out—she reached the bottom of the stairs just as the doorbell rang. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Jarvis,” she said, opening the door. “Merry Christmas, Ana.”

“Oh, Merry Christmas, Peggy!” Ana said happily, flinging her arms around her.

“Merry Christmas, Agent Carter,” Mr. Jarvis said, smiling and shaking her hand.

Steve appeared from the kitchen, and another round of holiday greetings was exchanged. Ana presented her with a small gift, which Peggy placed underneath the Christmas tree before in turn presenting her with the gift she and Steve had for them that was waiting on the bookshelf.

They sat down to dinner, and Steve really had outdone himself with this one. There was turkey roasted to perfection, wonderfully creamy mashed potatoes with gravy, those deliciously buttery rolls, green beans with crisp little bits of fried onions and bacon on top, and squash he had roasted. He grinned when Peggy spotted the very posh little china bowl down at the end of the table containing sweet tinned peaches, and she laughed and shook her head as she sat down.

Dinner was lovely, and they laughed and chatted happily as they ate. Then there was tea and coffee and Steve’s chocolate cake with strawberries, which Mr. Jarvis praised and demanded the recipe for. Steve and Ana started talking about art and whether they thought this Abstract Expressionism thing was going to go anywhere while Peggy and Mr. Jarvis reminisced over childhood Christmases in England.

When things started winding down, they saw their guests off with warm holiday wishes. “Steve, what are you doing?” Peggy asked as Steve ducked into the kitchen. “The candlelight service will be starting soon.”

“I know,” Steve said, snagging his green flowered apron off the hook by the stove and slipping it on over his cardigan. “But I can get these dishes done in fifteen minutes.” He shot her a grin. “Ten if you’ll put the food away.”

Peggy smiled and came in to help him, and the dishes were clean and the food put away in eight minutes. “Dinner was lovely, darling,” Peggy said, as they got in the car. “For someone who’s not done a proper Christmas in fourteen years, you pulled this one off with quite the flourish.”

Steve chuckled, blushing slightly, but pleased. “Oh, it wasn’t all that much.”

“It was wonderful,” Peggy insisted.

Steve’s dishwashing had made them just late enough not to be able to find a good parking spot, but the service had yet to start as they slipped into their seats. The lights went down, a tiny little spark of light up at the front of the sanctuary slowly becoming two, then three, then more as each person lit their candles, filling the room with a soft, peaceful glow. There was a sort of ethereal quality to the gentle carols sung in the candlelight, and the world for a moment was reduced to the soft glow of candles, beautiful music, and Steve’s arm resting contentedly over her shoulders.

Peggy shivered as they left the church and stepped out into the winter night, and she sidled across the seat in the car until she was nestled next to Steve. “You said one day in the future we’re going to have air and heating in cars, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve said with a smile. “Wishing you had some tonight?”

“I wouldn’t object to a bit of heat,” she said. She snuggled even closer. “Although, in a pinch, you do quite nicely.”

Steve laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.

Back in the house, he stoked back up the remains of the fire. “Maybe this will help warm you up,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist and pulling her close against him. Something soft and jazzy was coming from the radio. “Dance with me?” he asked.

Peggy smiled and slid her arm around his waist, taking his hand in hers. A dance was such a simple thing, but it was the last thing they had promised one another to do. Peggy hadn’t stopped finding it absolutely thrilling that they could now, and she hoped she never did.

Everything in the room was gently outlined in firelight, including Steve, who was glowing a little bit, his eyes sparkling, and just a little blurry on the edges. If she couldn’t feel his hand on her back, his fingers twined in hers, his breath warm on her face, she might have thought her Gran’s stories had come true at last and the ghost of her long-lost love was stepping through the veil as the clock drew near to midnight.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, and he did. He leaned down and he kissed her long and slow and deep.

“I love you, Peggy,” he whispered, closing his eyes and resting his cheek against hers. “More than I have words to tell you.”

“I love you too,” she said. A flicker of firelight caught the little glass house in the Christmas tree, and for a split second it blazed brightly in the dark room. Everything went blurry as happy tears swam over Peggy’s eyes, and she turned and kissed the side of Steve’s face. “Merry Christmas, darling,” she whispered.

* * *


End file.
